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Santa Blogs XIV

Posted on Monday, December 16, 2013

Dear Santa Blogs:

I like to include at least one present for my husband that is historically involved with the year we’re closing out: in 2009, it was a book on Lincoln, for his Bicentennial, in 2011 it was a Civil War book. Does it HAVE to be one of the Kennedy books for 2013, or is there something else we could commemorate?

History Buff

Dear Buffy:

It all depends on how historic the event has to be. Later this month, for example, we celebrate the appearance of the first crossword puzzle in 1913: you could give him a crossword puzzle book (try and get one published by Simon and Schuster, if they still do that kind of thing. It was crossword puzzle books which started their publishing company on its way.)

One of the five or six comic strips still published in books (anyway, that’s how it feels when I browse the humor section in a bookstore) is Fox Trot, which started publishing in 1988, a quarter century ago this year. You should have no trouble finding those books, though you might not find one he doesn’t already have, if he’s a fan.

If he’d like a gift of music, 2013 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first album of the Beatles, as well as the death of Patsy Cline. You should be able to find a CD that fits. A copy of that first Beatles album might run higher. You could also buy him a can of Tab, which celebrates its semicentennial, though it might just be easier to come up with that Beatles vinyl.

Buy him a DVD of The Little Mermaid: her statue in Copenhagen was put up 100 years ago. I saw no celebration whatsoever on the centennial of the first collection of federal income taxes in the United States, nor on the 100th anniversary of the introduction of stainless steel. Perhaps you could find a stainless steel copy of the statue of the Little Mermaid, and combine the celebrations.

The book Pride and Prejudice celebrated its Bicentennial in 2013. You could buy him a copy of that, with or without zombies. I may have missed the fuss over the 200th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi. Opera tickets might be appropriate, though I could probably sell you a libretto, a program, or an LP. (Actually, come to think of it, I had half a box of biographies of Verdi come in last week. Never even paused to check his birth date at the time.)

Or you could go all out and buy a new house, to commemorate that speech Abraham Lincoln gave in Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. See, you’d be giving him an address. (That joke didn’t kill vaudeville, just kicked it while it was down.)

So there are many possibilities, Buffy, but I’d go with that first one I suggested, to symbolize that the only cross words between you were ones that could be solved with a pencil. (Yeah, I’ve been writing verses for Valentines again.)